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CHAPTER 8. THE LAST NIGHT
Mr. Utterson was sitting by his fireside one evening after dinner, when he was
surprised to receive a visit from Poole.
"Bless me, Poole, what brings you here?" he cried; and then taking a second look at
him, "What ails you?" he added; "is the doctor ill?"
"Mr. Utterson," said the man, "there is something wrong."
"Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you," said the lawyer.
"Now, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want."
"You know the doctor's ways, sir," replied Poole, "and how he shuts himself up.
Well, he's shut up again in the cabinet; and I don't like it, sir--I wish I may die
if I like it. Mr. Utterson, sir, I'm afraid."
"Now, my good man," said the lawyer, "be explicit.
What are you afraid of?"
"I've been afraid for about a week," returned Poole, doggedly disregarding the
question, "and I can bear it no more."
The man's appearance amply bore out his words; his manner was altered for the
worse; and except for the moment when he had first announced his terror, he had not
once looked the lawyer in the face.
Even now, he sat with the glass of wine untasted on his knee, and his eyes directed
to a corner of the floor. "I can bear it no more," he repeated.
"Come," said the lawyer, "I see you have some good reason, Poole; I see there is
something seriously amiss. Try to tell me what it is."
"I think there's been foul play," said Poole, hoarsely.
"Foul play!" cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened and rather inclined to be
irritated in consequence.
"What foul play! What does the man mean?"
"I daren't say, sir," was the answer; "but will you come along with me and see for
yourself?"
Mr. Utterson's only answer was to rise and get his hat and greatcoat; but he observed
with wonder the greatness of the relief that appeared upon the butler's face, and
perhaps with no less, that the wine was
still untasted when he set it down to follow.
It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back
as though the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the most diaphanous and
lawny texture.
The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face.
It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for
Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of London so deserted.
He could have wished it otherwise; never in his life had he been conscious of so sharp
a wish to see and touch his fellow- creatures; for struggle as he might, there
was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity.
The square, when they got there, was full of wind and dust, and the thin trees in the
garden were lashing themselves along the railing.
Poole, who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in the middle of
the pavement, and in spite of the biting weather, took off his hat and mopped his
brow with a red pocket-handkerchief.
But for all the hurry of his coming, these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped
away, but the moisture of some strangling anguish; for his face was white and his
voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken.
"Well, sir," he said, "here we are, and God grant there be nothing wrong."
"Amen, Poole," said the lawyer.
Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the door was opened on the
chain; and a voice asked from within, "Is that you, Poole?"
"It's all right," said Poole.
"Open the door."
The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up; the fire was built
high; and about the hearth the whole of the servants, men and women, stood huddled
together like a flock of sheep.
At the sight of Mr. Utterson, the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the
cook, crying out "Bless God! it's Mr. Utterson," ran forward as if to take him in
her arms.
"What, what? Are you all here?" said the lawyer
peevishly. "Very irregular, very unseemly; your master
would be far from pleased."
"They're all afraid," said Poole. Blank silence followed, no one protesting;
only the maid lifted her voice and now wept loudly.
"Hold your tongue!"
Poole said to her, with a ferocity of accent that testified to his own jangled
nerves; and indeed, when the girl had so suddenly raised the note of her
lamentation, they had all started and
turned towards the inner door with faces of dreadful expectation.
"And now," continued the butler, addressing the knife-boy, "reach me a candle, and
we'll get this through hands at once." And then he begged Mr. Utterson to follow
him, and led the way to the back garden.
"Now, sir," said he, "you come as gently as you can.
I want you to hear, and I don't want you to be heard.
And see here, sir, if by any chance he was to ask you in, don't go."
Mr. Utterson's nerves, at this unlooked-for termination, gave a jerk that nearly threw
him from his balance; but he recollected his courage and followed the butler into
the laboratory building through the
surgical theatre, with its lumber of crates and bottles, to the foot of the stair.
Here Poole motioned him to stand on one side and listen; while he himself, setting
down the candle and making a great and obvious call on his resolution, mounted the
steps and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand on the red baize of the cabinet door.
"Mr. Utterson, sir, asking to see you," he called; and even as he did so, once more
violently signed to the lawyer to give ear.
A voice answered from within: "Tell him I cannot see anyone," it said complainingly.
"Thank you, sir," said Poole, with a note of something like triumph in his voice; and
taking up his candle, he led Mr. Utterson back across the yard and into the great
kitchen, where the fire was out and the beetles were leaping on the floor.
"Sir," he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, "Was that my master's voice?"
"It seems much changed," replied the lawyer, very pale, but giving look for
look. "Changed?
Well, yes, I think so," said the butler.
"Have I been twenty years in this man's house, to be deceived about his voice?
No, sir; master's made away with; he was made away with eight days ago, when we
heard him cry out upon the name of God; and who's in there instead of him, and why it
stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, Mr. Utterson!"
"This is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild tale my man," said Mr.
Utterson, biting his finger.
"Suppose it were as you suppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to have been--well, murdered
what could induce the murderer to stay? That won't hold water; it doesn't commend
itself to reason."
"Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I'll do it yet," said Poole.
"All this last week (you must know) him, or it, whatever it is that lives in that
cabinet, has been crying night and day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to
his mind.
It was sometimes his way--the master's, that is--to write his orders on a sheet of
paper and throw it on the stair.
We've had nothing else this week back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and
the very meals left there to be smuggled in when nobody was looking.
Well, sir, every day, ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been
orders and complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in
town.
Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another paper telling me to return
it, because it was not pure, and another order to a different firm.
This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir, whatever for."
"Have you any of these papers?" asked Mr. Utterson.
Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, which the lawyer, bending
nearer to the candle, carefully examined. Its contents ran thus: "Dr. Jekyll presents
his compliments to Messrs. Maw.
He assures them that their last sample is impure and quite useless for his present
purpose. In the year 18--, Dr. J. purchased a
somewhat large quantity from Messrs. M.
He now begs them to search with most sedulous care, and should any of the same
quality be left, forward it to him at once. Expense is no consideration.
The importance of this to Dr. J. can hardly be exaggerated."
So far the letter had run composedly enough, but here with a sudden splutter of
the pen, the writer's emotion had broken loose.
"For God's sake," he added, "find me some of the old."
"This is a strange note," said Mr. Utterson; and then sharply, "How do you
come to have it open?"
"The man at Maw's was main angry, sir, and he threw it back to me like so much dirt,"
returned Poole. "This is unquestionably the doctor's hand,
do you know?" resumed the lawyer.
"I thought it looked like it," said the servant rather sulkily; and then, with
another voice, "But what matters hand of write?" he said.
"I've seen him!"
"Seen him?" repeated Mr. Utterson. "Well?"
"That's it!" said Poole. "It was this way.
I came suddenly into the theater from the garden.
It seems he had slipped out to look for this drug or whatever it is; for the
cabinet door was open, and there he was at the far end of the room digging among the
crates.
He looked up when I came in, gave a kind of cry, and whipped upstairs into the cabinet.
It was but for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like
quills.
Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?
If it was my master, why did he cry out like a rat, and run from me?
I have served him long enough.
And then..." The man paused and passed his hand over his
face.
"These are all very strange circumstances," said Mr. Utterson, "but I think I begin to
see daylight.
Your master, Poole, is plainly seized with one of those maladies that both torture and
deform the sufferer; hence, for aught I know, the alteration of his voice; hence
the mask and the avoidance of his friends;
hence his eagerness to find this drug, by means of which the poor soul retains some
hope of ultimate recovery--God grant that he be not deceived!
There is my explanation; it is sad enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to consider; but
it is plain and natural, hangs well together, and delivers us from all
exorbitant alarms."
"Sir," said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor, "that thing was not my
master, and there's the truth.
My master"--here he looked round him and began to whisper--"is a tall, fine build of
a man, and this was more of a dwarf." Utterson attempted to protest.
"O, sir," cried Poole, "do you think I do not know my master after twenty years?
Do you think I do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door, where I saw
him every morning of my life?
No, sir, that thing in the mask was never Dr. Jekyll--God knows what it was, but it
was never Dr. Jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was *** done."
"Poole," replied the lawyer, "if you say that, it will become my duty to make
certain.
Much as I desire to spare your master's feelings, much as I am puzzled by this note
which seems to prove him to be still alive, I shall consider it my duty to break in
that door."
"Ah, Mr. Utterson, that's talking!" cried the butler.
"And now comes the second question," resumed Utterson: "Who is going to do it?"
"Why, you and me, sir," was the undaunted reply.
"That's very well said," returned the lawyer; "and whatever comes of it, I shall
make it my business to see you are no loser."
"There is an axe in the theatre," continued Poole; "and you might take the kitchen
poker for yourself." The lawyer took that rude but weighty
instrument into his hand, and balanced it.
"Do you know, Poole," he said, looking up, "that you and I are about to place
ourselves in a position of some peril?" "You may say so, sir, indeed," returned the
butler.
"It is well, then that we should be frank," said the other.
"We both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast.
This masked figure that you saw, did you recognise it?"
"Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that I could
hardly swear to that," was the answer.
"But if you mean, was it Mr. Hyde?--why, yes, I think it was!
You see, it was much of the same bigness; and it had the same quick, light way with
it; and then who else could have got in by the laboratory door?
You have not forgot, sir, that at the time of the *** he had still the key with
him? But that's not all.
I don't know, Mr. Utterson, if you ever met this Mr. Hyde?"
"Yes," said the lawyer, "I once spoke with him."
"Then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was something *** about
that gentleman--something that gave a man a turn--I don't know rightly how to say it,
sir, beyond this: that you felt in your marrow kind of cold and thin."
"I own I felt something of what you describe," said Mr. Utterson.
"Quite so, sir," returned Poole.
"Well, when that masked thing like a monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped
into the cabinet, it went down my spine like ice.
O, I know it's not evidence, Mr. Utterson; I'm book-learned enough for that; but a man
has his feelings, and I give you my bible- word it was Mr. Hyde!"
"Ay, ay," said the lawyer.
"My fears incline to the same point. Evil, I fear, founded--evil was sure to
come--of that connection.
Ay truly, I believe you; I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer
(for what purpose, God alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim's room.
Well, let our name be vengeance.
Call Bradshaw." The footman came at the summons, very white
and nervous. "Put yourself together, Bradshaw," said the
lawyer.
"This suspense, I know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention to make
an end of it. Poole, here, and I are going to force our
way into the cabinet.
If all is well, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame.
Meanwhile, lest anything should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to escape by
the back, you and the boy must go round the corner with a pair of good sticks and take
your post at the laboratory door.
We give you ten minutes, to get to your stations."
As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch.
"And now, Poole, let us get to ours," he said; and taking the poker under his arm,
led the way into the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and it
was now quite dark.
The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that deep well of building,
tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their steps, until they came into the
shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to wait.
London hummed solemnly all around; but nearer at hand, the stillness was only
broken by the sounds of a footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor.
"So it will walk all day, sir," whispered Poole; "ay, and the better part of the
night. Only when a new sample comes from the
chemist, there's a bit of a break.
Ah, it's an ill conscience that's such an enemy to rest!
Ah, sir, there's blood foully shed in every step of it!
But hark again, a little closer--put your heart in your ears, Mr. Utterson, and tell
me, is that the doctor's foot?"
The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they went so slowly;
it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyll.
Utterson sighed.
"Is there never anything else?" he asked. Poole nodded.
"Once," he said. "Once I heard it weeping!"
"Weeping? how that?" said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of horror.
"Weeping like a woman or a lost soul," said the butler.
"I came away with that upon my heart, that I could have wept too."
But now the ten minutes drew to an end.
Poole disinterred the axe from under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set
upon the nearest table to light them to the attack; and they drew near with bated
breath to where that patient foot was still
going up and down, up and down, in the quiet of the night.
"Jekyll," cried Utterson, with a loud voice, "I demand to see you."
He paused a moment, but there came no reply.
"I give you fair warning, our suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,"
he resumed; "if not by fair means, then by foul--if not of your consent, then by brute
force!"
"Utterson," said the voice, "for God's sake, have mercy!"
"Ah, that's not Jekyll's voice--it's Hyde's!" cried Utterson.
"Down with the door, Poole!"
Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the building, and the red baize
door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal screech, as of mere animal terror,
rang from the cabinet.
Up went the axe again, and again the panels crashed and the frame bounded; four times
the blow fell; but the wood was tough and the fittings were of excellent workmanship;
and it was not until the fifth, that the
lock burst and the wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet.
The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had succeeded, stood
back a little and peered in.
There lay the cabinet before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing
and chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a drawer or two
open, papers neatly set forth on the
business table, and nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea; the quietest room,
you would have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the most
commonplace that night in London.
Right in the middle there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and still twitching.
They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back and beheld the face of Edward Hyde.
He was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes of the doctor's bigness; the
cords of his face still moved with a semblance of life, but life was quite gone:
and by the crushed phial in the hand and
the strong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, Utterson knew that he was looking
on the body of a self-destroyer. "We have come too late," he said sternly,
"whether to save or punish.
Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find the body of your
master."
The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre, which filled
almost the whole ground storey and was lighted from above, and by the cabinet,
which formed an upper story at one end and looked upon the court.
A corridor joined the theatre to the door on the by-street; and with this the cabinet
communicated separately by a second flight of stairs.
There were besides a few dark closets and a spacious cellar.
All these they now thoroughly examined.
Each closet needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell
from their doors, had stood long unopened.
The cellar, indeed, was filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times of the
surgeon who was Jekyll's predecessor; but even as they opened the door they were
advertised of the uselessness of further
search, by the fall of a perfect mat of cobweb which had for years sealed up the
entrance. No where was there any trace of Henry
Jekyll dead or alive.
Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. "He must be buried here," he said,
hearkening to the sound.
"Or he may have fled," said Utterson, and he turned to examine the door in the by-
street.
It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they found the key, already stained
with rust. "This does not look like use," observed the
lawyer.
"Use!" echoed Poole. "Do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as
if a man had stamped on it." "Ay," continued Utterson, "and the
fractures, too, are rusty."
The two men looked at each other with a scare.
"This is beyond me, Poole," said the lawyer.
"Let us go back to the cabinet."
They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional awestruck glance
at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents of the cabinet.
At one table, there were traces of chemical work, various measured heaps of some white
salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man
had been prevented.
"That is the same drug that I was always bringing him," said Poole; and even as he
spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over.
This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn cosily up, and the
tea things stood ready to the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the cup.
There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea things open, and
Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several
times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand with startling blasphemies.
Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came to the cheval-
glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror.
But it was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow playing on the
roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the
presses, and their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in.
"This glass has seen some strange things, sir," whispered Poole.
"And surely none stranger than itself," echoed the lawyer in the same tones.
"For what did Jekyll"--he caught himself up at the word with a start, and then
conquering the weakness--"what could Jekyll want with it?" he said.
"You may say that!" said Poole.
Next they turned to the business table. On the desk, among the neat array of
papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor's hand, the name of Mr.
Utterson.
The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor.
The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he had
returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of death and as a deed of
gift in case of disappearance; but in place
of the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement read the name
of Gabriel John Utterson.
He looked at Poole, and then back at the paper, and last of all at the dead
malefactor stretched upon the carpet. "My head goes round," he said.
"He has been all these days in possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have
raged to see himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document."
He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor's hand and dated at the
top. "O Poole!" the lawyer cried, "he was alive
and here this day.
He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space; he must be still alive, he must
have fled!
And then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we venture to declare this
suicide? O, we must be careful.
I foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe."
"Why don't you read it, sir?" asked Poole. "Because I fear," replied the lawyer
solemnly.
"God grant I have no cause for it!" And with that he brought the paper to his
eyes and read as follows:
"My dear Utterson,--When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have disappeared,
under what circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee, but my instinct and
all the circumstances of my nameless
situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early.
Go then, and first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your
hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of
"Your unworthy and unhappy friend,
"HENRY JEKYLL." "There was a third enclosure?" asked
Utterson.
"Here, sir," said Poole, and gave into his hands a considerable packet sealed in
several places. The lawyer put it in his pocket.
"I would say nothing of this paper.
If your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit.
It is now ten; I must go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall be
back before midnight, when we shall send for the police."
They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and Utterson, once
more leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the hall, trudged back to his
office to read the two narratives in which this mystery was now to be explained.
-CHAPTER 9. DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE
On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening delivery a
registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague and old school companion,
Henry Jekyll.
I was a good deal surprised by this; for we were by no means in the habit of
correspondence; I had seen the man, dined with him, indeed, the night before; and I
could imagine nothing in our intercourse
that should justify formality of registration.
The contents increased my wonder; for this is how the letter ran:
"10th December, 18--.
"Dear Lanyon,--You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may have differed
at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at least on my side, any break in
our affection.
There was never a day when, if you had said to me, `Jekyll, my life, my honour, my
reason, depend upon you,' I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you.
Lanyon my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me to-night,
I am lost.
You might suppose, after this preface, that I am going to ask you for something
dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself.
"I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night--ay, even if you
were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless your carriage should
be actually at the door; and with this
letter in your hand for consultation, to drive straight to my house.
Poole, my butler, has his orders; you will find him waiting your arrival with a
locksmith.
The door of my cabinet is then to be forced: and you are to go in alone; to open
the glazed press (letter E) on the left hand, breaking the lock if it be shut; and
to draw out, with all its contents as they
stand, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the same thing) the third from
the bottom.
In my extreme distress of mind, I have a morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even
if I am in error, you may know the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a
phial and a paper book.
This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you to Cavendish Square exactly as it
stands. "That is the first part of the service: now
for the second.
You should be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before
midnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin, not only in the fear of one of
those obstacles that can neither be
prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour when your servants are in bed is to be
preferred for what will then remain to do.
At midnight, then, I have to ask you to be alone in your consulting room, to admit
with your own hand into the house a man who will present himself in my name, and to
place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from my cabinet.
Then you will have played your part and earned my gratitude completely.
Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you will have understood
that these arrangements are of capital importance; and that by the neglect of one
of them, fantastic as they must appear, you
might have charged your conscience with my death or the shipwreck of my reason.
"Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heart sinks and my
hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility.
Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness of
distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but
punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told.
Serve me, my dear Lanyon and save "Your friend,
"H.J.
"P.S.--I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my soul.
It is possible that the post-office may fail me, and this letter not come into your
hands until to-morrow morning.
In that case, dear Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most convenient for you in
the course of the day; and once more expect my messenger at midnight.
It may then already be too late; and if that night passes without event, you will
know that you have seen the last of Henry Jekyll."
Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane; but till that
was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound to do as he requested.
The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its
importance; and an appeal so worded could not be set aside without a grave
responsibility.
I rose accordingly from table, got into a hansom, and drove straight to Jekyll's
house.
The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had received by the same post as mine a
registered letter of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith and a
carpenter.
The tradesmen came while we were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr.
Denman's surgical theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll's private
cabinet is most conveniently entered.
The door was very strong, the lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would
have great trouble and have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the
locksmith was near despair.
But this last was a handy fellow, and after two hour's work, the door stood open.
The press marked E was unlocked; and I took out the drawer, had it filled up with straw
and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to Cavendish Square.
Here I proceeded to examine its contents.
The powders were neatly enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing
chemist; so that it was plain they were of Jekyll's private manufacture: and when I
opened one of the wrappers I found what
seemed to me a simple crystalline salt of a white colour.
The phial, to which I next turned my attention, might have been about half full
of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to
me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether.
At the other ingredients I could make no guess.
The book was an ordinary version book and contained little but a series of dates.
These covered a period of many years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a
year ago and quite abruptly.
Here and there a brief remark was appended to a date, usually no more than a single
word: "double" occurring perhaps six times in a total of several hundred entries; and
once very early in the list and followed by
several marks of exclamation, "total failure!!!"
All this, though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that was definite.
Here were a phial of some salt, and the record of a series of experiments that had
led (like too many of Jekyll's investigations) to no end of practical
usefulness.
How could the presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour, the
sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague?
If his messenger could go to one place, why could he not go to another?
And even granting some impediment, why was this gentleman to be received by me in
secret?
The more I reflected the more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a case of
cerebral disease; and though I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver,
that I might be found in some posture of self-defence.
Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker sounded very gently
on the door.
I went myself at the summons, and found a small man crouching against the pillars of
the portico. "Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?"
I asked.
He told me "yes" by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him enter, he did not
obey me without a searching backward glance into the darkness of the square.
There was a policeman not far off, advancing with his bull's eye open; and at
the sight, I thought my visitor started and made greater haste.
These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed him into
the bright light of the consulting room, I kept my hand ready on my weapon.
Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him.
I had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain.
He was small, as I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his
face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent
debility of constitution, and--last but not
least--with the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood.
This bore some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked
sinking of the pulse.
At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and
merely wondered at the acuteness of the symptoms; but I have since had reason to
believe the cause to lie much deeper in the
nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred.
This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me what I
can only, describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that
would have made an ordinary person
laughable; his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober
fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement--the trousers hanging
on his legs and rolled up to keep them from
the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide
upon his shoulders.
Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far from moving me to
laughter.
Rather, as there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the
creature that now faced me--something seizing, surprising and revolting--this
fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with
and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in the man's nature and character, there
was added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world.
These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set down in, were
yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on fire with sombre
excitement.
"Have you got it?" he cried. "Have you got it?"
And so lively was his impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought
to shake me.
I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood.
"Come, sir," said I. "You forget that I have not yet the
pleasure of your acquaintance.
Be seated, if you please."
And I showed him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as
fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the hour, the
nature of my preoccupations, and the horror
I had of my visitor, would suffer me to muster.
"I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied civilly enough.
"What you say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my
politeness.
I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of
business of some moment; and I understood..."
He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected
manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria--"I understood,
a drawer..."
But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, and some perhaps on my own
growing curiosity.
"There it is, sir," said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the floor behind a
table and still covered with the sheet.
He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart: I could hear his
teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to
see that I grew alarmed both for his life and reason.
"Compose yourself," said I.
He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of despair, plucked away
the sheet.
At sight of the contents, he uttered one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat
petrified.
And the next moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, "Have
you a graduated glass?" he asked. I rose from my place with something of an
effort and gave him what he asked.
He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and
added one of the powders.
The mixture, which was at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the
crystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small
fumes of vapour.
Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed
to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green.
My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set
down the glass upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of
scrutiny.
"And now," said he, "to settle what remains.
Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand
and to go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of
curiosity too much command of you?
Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide.
As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser,
unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a
kind of riches of the soul.
Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to
fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and
your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan."
"Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly possessing, "you speak
enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no very strong
impression of belief.
But I have gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see
the end." "It is well," replied my visitor.
"Lanyon, you remember your vows: what follows is under the seal of our
profession.
And now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who
have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your
superiors--behold!"
He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp.
A cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring
with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I
thought, a change--he seemed to swell--his
face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter--and the next
moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised to
shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.
"O God!"
I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for there before my eyes--pale and shaken,
and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from
death--there stood Henry Jekyll!
What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper.
I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when
that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot
answer.
My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at
all hours of the day and night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must
die; and yet I shall die incredulous.
As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of
penitence, I can not, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror.
I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit
it) will be more than enough.
The creature who crept into my house that night was, on Jekyll's own confession,
known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in every corner of the land as the murderer of
Carew.
HASTIE LANYON